OK, now that I’m done GRE-ing and packing and wondering what in the world absinthe tastes like, here’s the belated announcement. I won’t be back till early December, so the winner will get the book a few days late.

Lauren Winner, Mudhouse Sabbath, (Paraclete Press, 2003), 161 pp.

This cute little volume, written by a brilliant half-Jewish woman who grew up in the South and converted from various flavours of sort-of-Judaism to an earthy Hebraic Anglicanism, shows what Protestants ought to learn from the Jews. (Table of contents here, for the curious.)

Thomas Sowell, The Quest for Cosmic Justice, (Free Press, 2002), 224 pp.

Thomas Sowell has been a favourite of mine for many years and thanks to the generosity of a not-anonymous-anymore donor, I’ve been enjoying rediscovering a familiar old friend. (I used his book Ethnic America to teach three classes on the history of American immigration.)

Leave a comment and lemme know which one you want to read!

The OHB has tagged me, so have fun while I’m gone.

True or false?

1. My mother is Chinese, but is also part Mongolian.
2. My favourite pop is ginger ale.
3. I prefer sweet flowery oils like ylang-ylang or geranium to citrusy oils like orange or lemon.
4. My favourite perfume is J.Lo Glow.
5. I was baptized as an infant.
6. The colour I have liked longest is black.
7. I have experimented with drugs.
8. I took yachting lessons.
9. I never fall asleep during movies (except for Star Wars Episode IV).
10. For a few years, all my online friends were European.
11. When I was 12, my dream was to be a robber ninja and a ballerina.
12. I have a tattoo of a frog on my left shoulder.
13. I once wrapped a snake around my neck.
14. I always write with a fountain pen.
15. My favourite instrument is the piano.
16. I believe birth control is sin.
17. I prefer using <center> to <div align="center">.
18. I collect Asterix comics in English, German, and Latin.
19. I love geometry.
20. I don’t believe in taking aspirin.

I believe in the One, Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

I believe in the inerrancy of the Bible.

I believe that God created the heavens and the earth in 6 literal days.

I believe that man was created to build the city of God and that mandate was passed on to the Church. Christians must build the kingdom of God on earth.

I believe that man is totally depraved, that God has chosen the elect through no merit of their own, that Christ died for them, that they cannot resist the work of the Holy Spirit, and that they will persevere in the faith.

I believe that Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and buried. He descended into hades, rose again on the third day, ascended into heaven, sits on the right hand of God, and rules history from there.

I believe that children of believing parents are born into covenant with God, and that they should receive baptism and participate in the Lord’s Supper.

I believe churches should administer the Lord’s Supper weekly using bread and wine.

I believe that after all people of all nations bow the knee before Jesus Christ and praise His name, He will come again to the earth to end history and judge all men, living and dead.

I believe that those who love God and obey His Word will have everlasting life in heaven, and that those who do not love God and obey Him will burn in everlasting hell.

It is said a man is happiest with an American house (because they are comparatively spacious and comfortable), a Japanese wife (because they are supposedly quiet and submissive), and a Chinese cook (because those who have had real Chinese food know it is the best in the world).

Late at night, she is sitting at the kitchen table with books and papers spread all around: a Japanese Bible, a Chinese Bible, various English translations, a Hebrew Old Testament, Greek New Testament, Septuagint, numerous lexicons, dictionaries, and commentaries, and stacks of pages with handwritten notes, charts, and schedules. As her husband walks in, they hold a discussion, the decibels rising and falling with their excitement as they go over iddiest biddiest word roots and stems, which somehow relate to themes overarching all of History and the Bible.

In the morning, she is still sitting there, still writing furiously. As husband and children start to wake up, everything on the table is put away and she cooks. While she cooks, the discussion from last night resumes.

But all that isn’t really the point. What she does is not all that she is. What is she really? “Eaten up with zeal,� perpetually on fire, but never burned up, absolutely uncompromising on the essentials.

A man can be happy with American … um … citizenship? … a Japanese apartment the size of your living room (no kidding!), and a valiant Chinese wife.

There is a place where love is free and death is forever, its people so innocent, honest, and earnest they are content and happy. The women walk the streets in sunlight and moonlight, free from fear of harm, hands hiding perpetual giggles. The men, hairless and three feet tall, wear somber suits, serious faces, shy smiles. The children worship parents and revere teachers. Everyone lines up in single file everywhere and lives in metal boxes in the sky.

They are studious and literate, their books the best bound, resumes always handwritten with colour photos. The ones with neatest handwriting and the meekest faces are chosen.

Lacking in imagination, they are incapable of invention. In their humility they never cease to learn as much as there is to be learned from others. Through perseverance and precise mimicry, they end up improving on others’ inventions making them their own and are finally too proud to admit to borrowing anything.

They welcome aliens (especially those blond, white ones, but half-white is more than sufficient for adoration), and give them minimum wages of $2500 a month, even for those with absolutely no credentials whatsoever.

It is heaven for animal-lovers, with all varieties of pigeons, crows, sparrows, and cats. Pigeons spread respiratory diseases, crows eat the pigeons, overweight cats groan through neighborhoods gorging on free food … and the sparrows? The sparrows fall to the ground like all the hairs of our heads.

God has blessed them with the blessings of His covenant for they keep it quite faithfully. There are no starving children with distended bellies, no enemies within or without their borders, no crime or criminals, nothing distressful or distasteful but the free love of licentiousness and the eternal death of ancestor worship.

They live in a vacuum of highest prosperity, oblivious to the Light all around them, for there are no beautiful feet, none to preach the gospel of peace and bring the glad tidings. Their love is death, and there are none to show them otherwise.

Cousin Ken

My cousin Ken who is one of my favouritest people in the world and whose name pops up here and there on this blog turned 21. I can’t believe my pretty baby boy cousin is now legally an adult throughout the globe.

For years, when I had computer problems, I would pick him up and set him in my lap, and we would face the monitor together. More often than not, he would fix everything for me. Except for the lap part, things are not too different now. My whole life, he’s been the first one I go to when my computer goes bananas and I panick, when I need to change something and don’t know how to, when I want to build a new computer and want to be sure there won’t be any hardware conflicts. Everything I know about hardware (which isn’t very much, granted, LOL) I learned from him.

I’m looking forward to seeing where God takes you! May God bless you, coz!

A couple weeks ago, my cell phone showed I’d missed an international call. Yesterday, I had two missed calls from the same number. As far as I’ve been able to find out, nobody I know has called. ‘Course, I have my number on this site, so it could’ve been anybody….

Yesterday, I saw an old MSN screenname I quit using come online (all my IDs are on my buddylist). I froze and stared for a while and then IMed it, “What in the world is this handle doing online?” In a few seconds, it went offline. Today, I’ve been changing passwords on every site I can think of, especially where I have accounts with credit card information.

In the last week, people have found this blog searching for the following.

- lexicography (Nice.)
- “dead toad” picture (OK.)
- Ben Zedek Smith blog (Sorry, he doesn’t have one.)
- stomped mice to death (Yuck.)
- how to beat a frog senseless (Why?)
- bald women berek (*blasts of laughter*)
- “brady allen” horror
- “because those who have had real Chinese food know it is the best in the world” (Hehe.)
- make your own roach killer (Why?)

I’m using 3 GRE prep books. My verbal percentile is always about the same, but my math percentiles are crazy.

- Monday, Thursday, Friday: Kaplan, 70th
- Tuesday, Wednesday: Barron’s, 20th
- Saturday: Princeton, 60th

Denny’s Wine Menu

I learnt nearly nothing from Barron’s. Kaplan is easy to understand but almost too simple. Princeton has been the most useful.

Six hours sitting at Denny’s today drinking way too much coffee (free refills) drove me to confusion and rage, and banging my head back against the wall several times a page, muttering. Nine more days, 13 more full-length practice tests till zero hour.

And, oh, hey. In Japan, Denny’s is a fairly nice restaurant. They have strictly-trained super-polite waiters and waitresses, serve Japanese and Western food and desserts, and even various kinds of wine and cheese.

Today, I jumped from a post about Stereotypography to the The Italic Ampersand, where the author wished she could read this Japanese page. Here’s a really, really quick rough translation.

What is an ampersand?

Well, let’s take a look at the picture on the left. It is the DVD jacket for Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes’ Romeo & Juliet.

And, because it’s in white it’s hard to see, but can you tell it says “hope & despair, tragedy & love”? Inside the red cross beneath there is a black “&”.

This “&” mark means “and” of course, but why?

Actually, this comes from Latin (a dead language not spoken by anyone anymore). It is a stylish way of writing “et” (meaning “and” in English). As you can see in the chart below, there are various designs.

This mark is called “ampersand.”

A long time ago, when learning the alphabet at school, children memorized it by saying from A, “A-per-se-A, B-per-se-B, …” (A by itself A, B by itself B). And then, when they finished Z, there was an “&” and they said, “and-per-se-and.” That became “ampersand.”

The movie Titanic is really popular.

Incidentally, “et” is in “et cetera. That’s why it is abbreviated “etc.” but also as &c.

The chart on the left is from Kotoba Kotoba Kotoba (p. 47) by Ueno Kagetomi.

By the way, the title Kotoba Kotoba Kotoba is of course a line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “Words, words, words.” This is what Hamlet says to Polonius (or was it Ophelia?) when asked “What do you read, my lord?”

Don’t ask me where the totally random comment about Titanic came from … maybe ’cause DiCappucino is in both movies?